Thanks for your thought about par-baking crusts ahead. I have wanted to make the Buddyís clone pizzas as close I as can to the old-time Buddyís pizzas at market. I wouldnít want to compromise the freshness of the pizza in any way if I can help it. I have no idea if par-baking would compromise the freshness of the crumb, but believe it might.

Some baked products can be made at home in Pa., but then there has to be an inspector that comes to your home and there canít be any dogs or cats anywhere near where you are baking. All things needed for baking needs to be kept in a separate area. There also needs to be a license paid for in Pa. to make anything at home. More problems I could foresee if how would all the dough get mixed in my small Kitchen Aid mixer, where would I store all the dough, how would I store the par-baked crusts until the next day. I also do have dogs and cats at home. I already have my oven on at market all day, so that also just makes it easier to bake at market for me.

Apart from the fact that, at least in Norma's case, she has already said that she does not want to introduce another step in the Detroit style pizza making process, there is at least one other problem that I envision. And it is the fact that I have never seen a par-baked crust with a hydration of 75%. By par-baked, I mean crusts that are made for longer term use, maybe even days after being made and stored somewhere. Most par-baked crusts that I have seen have been for thin pizzas, such as cracker style or NY style. I also wonder how a par-baked Detroit style crust would go over with customers after being stored for some time. I am thinking in terms of freshness and tenderness and airiness, all of which are critical to the success of the Detroit style pizza in my opinion. I can see making a few pre-baked crusts and setting them aside to fulfill orders more quickly, as it appears that Klausie's does, but even then I would want to be sure that the quality of the end product is not compromised in any way.

As for making par-baked crusts at home and bringing them to market in Norma's case, that would not be permitted. The rules and regulations at market require that everything that is sold at market be completely made at market.

Peter

Peter,

I was just speaking in a general sense, not about Norma's operation. But in any case, just to clarify, I didn't mean par-baking days ahead, I meant same day. I've seen photos of Detroit style pizzerias where they have as many as 30 pans with raw, rising dough in them. I just have an intuition that in a high volume setting, having one guy do nothing but par-baking crusts would be more efficient. But I could be wrong.

Maybe I'll experiment one weekend.

Speaking of experiments, last week, as a possible appetizer or meal accompaniment, I tried baking a "naked" crust that I then cut into pieces and spread with butter. Delicious! So that would be another reason to par-bake crusts: so that some can be used, as-is, for appetizers instead of the usual dinner rolls.

I also want to try dipping in my shakshuka (http://goo.gl/AyWwS) instead of the traditional challah (Jewish egg bread). Maybe I'll make a shakshuka pizza!

Thanks for your thought about par-baking crusts ahead. I have wanted to make the Buddyís clone pizzas as close I as can to the old-time Buddyís pizzas at market. I wouldnít want to compromise the freshness of the pizza in any way if I can help it. I have no idea if par-baking would compromise the freshness of the crumb, but believe it might.

Some baked products can be made at home in Pa., but then there has to be an inspector that comes to your home and there canít be any dogs or cats anywhere near where you are baking. All things needed for baking needs to be kept in a separate area. There also needs to be a license paid for in Pa. to make anything at home. More problems I could foresee if how would all the dough get mixed in my small Kitchen Aid mixer, where would I store all the dough, how would I store the par-baked crusts until the next day. I also do have dogs and cats at home. I already have my oven on at market all day, so that also just makes it easier to bake at market for me.

Your thought might work out for someone though.

Norma

Well Norma, like I said...it was just a thought. And like you, I'm naturally inclined to think a pre or par baked DS style crust probably just would not have the nice fluffy texture...but then there is Klausie's doing the very same thing.I'm sorry that I wasn't able to make it out to Klausie's pizza truck the last time they were in town here and I said I was going to go try their pie. I just checked their schedule and am going to try not missing the next Durham event they have recently scheduled...will post back results!

I know you want to keep things simple, Norma, especially given the multiple styles you lovingly prepare by hand at Market.....I jus find this par-baking topic kinda interesting...

As for making par-baked crusts at home and bringing them to market in Norma's case, that would not be permitted. The rules and regulations at market require that everything that is sold at market be completely made at market.

Peter

Peter,

I am fairly well aware of most health dept./market regulations....and also about the practices many folks perform under the radar.....

Well Norma, like I said...it was just a thought. And like you, I'm naturally inclined to think a pre or par baked DS style crust probably just would not have the nice fluffy texture...but then there is Klausie's doing the very same thing.I'm sorry that I wasn't able to make it out to Klausie's pizza truck the last time they were in town here and I said I was going to go try their pie. I just checked their schedule and am going to try not missing the next Durham event they have recently scheduled...will post back results!

I know you want to keep things simple, Norma, especially given the multiple styles you lovingly prepare by hand at Market.....I jus find this par-baking topic kinda interesting...

Bob,

That is okay you didnít make it out to the Klausieís pizza truck. I have tried par-baking different times on other Sicilian threads.

I started to make the Buddyís clone dough with 85% hydration a little while ago. I mixed on speed 4 first for 3 minutes, then changed to speed 8 for 6 minutes. The second picture is what the dough looked like then. It was sticking all the way on the flat beater. At first the dough looked very liquid. I then used speed 8 for 5 minutes. It can be seen the dough wanted to stick to my finger, but not really bad, but the dough wants to turn more liquid after the mixer is turned off on the fourth picture. There already looked like there was some strength in the dough. I am letting the dough rest for 20 minutes and then will resume mixing again and will decide to mix on how the dough looks. I used cold water right out of the refrigerator. The Kitchen Aid mixer didnít move at all on the counter. The third picture is when the dough was mixing at speed 8 in the second mix. The first picture is of the print out from the expanded dough calculation tool. I used a higher bowl residue compensation than before because I wasnít sure how much dough I might lose to sticking issues. I used Occident flour.

After the dough rested 20 minutes it didnít seem really sticky, but the dough was slack. I mixed again 3 more times on speed 8 and now the dough has turned back into a batter. It didn't look like a batter after mixing two times, but the dough was still too slack to ball.

Does anyone have any ideas of what I should do now? I wonder if there is a point where the dough could have been mixed too much. I am letting the dough rest again.

I let the dough rest again and then tried to mix on speeds 6 and 8. The dough didnít get any better and I sure donít have time for a lot of stretches and folds this evening. This dough was just like glop. I added 43 grams of flour, so I donít know what the hydration of the dough is now, but I just mixed until the extra flour was incorporated on speed 4. I then did a few stretches and folds, scaled dough to 9.5 oz, balled, oiled the dough ball and spread it out in the steel pan. It is in my oven now with the light on.

First picture about mixing again. Second picture after adding the 43 grams of extra flour. Third picture dough on the table. Fourth picture oiled balled dough ball in the steel pan. Fifth picture dough spread out in the steel pan.

Well that was a failure that I couldnít make a Detroit style dough with 85% hydration, at least not the way that I mixed the dough.

The final pizza did turn okay though. I just used the Mackís sauce Steve and I tried out on Tuesday for the sauce for this pizza because it was handy.

The dough tempered fast with the oven light on and the pizza baked okay. The first picture of the pizza in the oven on the second to bottom rack on my pizza stone was taken at 6 minutes. The second picture of the pizza in the oven was taken at 12 minutes. The final bake time can be seen on my cell phone. My oven was as hot as it can go, which is a little over 500 degrees F.

The Detroit style pizza was good, but it didnít have the airy crumb that I thought it might have. I donít know if there wasnít a real airy crumb from me mixing too much or not.

As you can see, you ended up with a hydration of about 74.2%, which is about what you have been using recently. That might help explain why the crumb looked similar, at least to me, to the crumb structure of your most recent efforts using 75% hydration. You will also note that the baker's percents for the salt and IDY also changed (decreased) because the total flour weight went up when you added the 43 grams of flour to the original amount. The dough balls you ended up with had the set of baker's percents noted above.

I hadn't thought much how you would actually knead the dough. I assumed that you might use the mixing/kneading regimen that was described in the article at https://sites.google.com/site/hollosyt/quickrusticciabattapizza but with a rest period inserted in the middle of the knead and maybe a bit longer total knead time to account for the fact that your dough ball weight (about 555 grams initially) was more than the weight of the dough (about 490 grams) described in the article. I am also not sure about using cold water. In my experience, using cold water does make it difficult to form the dough. This is something that I learned when I tried to make dough that was to be frozen as soon as it was done mixing. Everything that I had read about how frozen dough balls are made commercially said to keep the dough as cold as possible at every stage.

As you can see, you ended up with a hydration of about 74.2%, which is about what you have been using recently. That might help explain why the crumb looked similar, at least to me, to the crumb structure of your most recent efforts using 75% hydration. You will also note that the baker's percents for the salt and IDY also changed (decreased) because the total flour weight went up when you added the 43 grams of flour to the original amount. The dough balls you ended up with had the set of baker's percents noted above.

I hadn't thought much how you would actually knead the dough. I assumed that you might use the mixing/kneading regimen that was described in the article at https://sites.google.com/site/hollosyt/quickrusticciabattapizza but with a rest period inserted in the middle of the knead and maybe a bit longer total knead time to account for the fact that your dough ball weight (about 555 grams initially) was more than the weight of the dough (about 490 grams) described in the article. I am also not sure about using cold water. In my experience, using cold water does make it difficult to form the dough. This is something that I learned when I tried to make dough that was to be frozen as soon as it was done mixing. Everything that I had read about how frozen dough balls are made commercially said to keep the dough as cold as possible at every stage.

Thanks for telling me how the dough formulation I used changed since I added the 43 grams of extra flour and doing the calculations to show me that. By the feel of the dough I thought the hydration might be higher, but now I know what the hydration was. The crumb might have looked similar to when I am using 75% hydration, but the crumb had a taste more like bread and really was denser than at market. I also donít know why, but my bottom crust hardly browned at all and I did grease my steel pan the same way that I do at market. I thought the IDY and salt amounts would have decreased from using the extra flour.

I had thought of trying a ďdouble hydrationĒ with part of the water held back at the beginning and then slowly incorporating the water when the dough felt okay. I had thought of holding back about ľ of the water in the formulation. I decided to just go with my normal mixing method to see what would happen. I didnít mean too mix too many times, or for so long, but the dough just wasnít coming together enough. I guess my understanding on how to mix really hydration doughs isnít the best. sub posted that cold water helps higher hydration at Reply 8 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,23668.msg240394.html#msg240394 and that is why I tried cold water. I didnít use ice water, only cold water from my fridge. I have used really cold water at market with decent results, but not it such a high hydration dough. I should have taken the dough out of the mixer a lot sooner. I saw I basically destroyed the dough since it went back into a batter. I guess the only thing that saved it at all was the extra flour.

Thanks for referencing the links and especially the experiment you did in in trying to destroy dough. I see you succeeded too. My dough before I added the extra flour was just like mush, or liquid batter. I didnít take my final dough temperature but know mine was not as hot as yours from touching the dough different times.

Last Tueday, Norma gave me a couple of her DS doughs that were leftover at the end of the day. I put them in my pans and in the fridge for another two days before I got around to baking. When I went to stretch them out I noticed that they had lots of air bubbles in them. After proofing in my warm oven for about 45 minutes I saw another notable rise in the dough, which surprised me a bit after several days of cold ferment. The pizzas rose quite a bit further yet during the bake and resulted in the most tender melt in your mouth crust I had yet to experience! My wife said it was the best she ever had! Sorry, I only took a few pictures and no crumb shots.

Thanks for posting the pictures of what happened with those leftover dough balls. Those pizzas look very good and I am glad your wife liked them.

I never would have thought they would have been any good after 2 more days. They were even taken out of the steel pans and then put into those Styrofoam containers. This past Monday was when I added more yeast than I had wanted to and had a higher final dough temperature. I guess it shows that yeast doesnít die to quickly.

Iíll give you more leftover dough balls if there are any left. This weather in our area sure hasnít been good on Tuesdays so there probably will be more leftover dough balls from time to time.